Author of THE NEVERLAND WARS and other Young Adult works

Overwhelmed? MOVE TO PORTLAND

I am reaching another one of those points in which I feel, quite simply, overwhelmed. There seems to be an insane amount of motion and insanity associated with everything I touch these days. I’m beginning to suspect that adventure is best perpetrated and enjoyed most fully when you know you have something loving and stable to go back to. I’m starting to feel like a grownup human being though, and it is hard to figure out what “home” means at this transitional point in life.

I’m leaving for Portland on Friday, and overwhelmed by that too. I think that getting away from a geographic place that implies social obligation would be nice for few months, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m subletting a place just to get a feel for this whole “paying rent, being an adult” thing. Subletting is nice, because nobody asks about your work history (none) pay (dirt) or position (self-employed and freelancing.)

I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed myself any time I was in Portland, and would really like to see if I could exhaust myself of the city’s novelty or really, truly fall in love with it. As a strange person, I feel it is almost a moral obligation to make a pilgrimage to Portland and do my part to help “keep Portland weird.”

With any luck I will be able to iron out the final little tweaks my critique group has suggested for The Neverland Wars and then do some hardcore querying. Maybe I’ll finish these short stories, and get them off in literary magazine queries and residency applications. Who knows, despite everything else I “should” be doing for my career, maybe I’ll start a new novel and dive into something that feels fun and personal instead of professional and work-like. It is a very strange sensation, watching the lines between job and hobby blur together as you start getting paid to do “work” that you would do (and have been doing for the past six years) for free.

I’ve got a few errands to go run now, but I thought I would just update the blog…let you know that I’ll be in Portland for the next two months, trying to figure out where to go and what to do from there. As always, I am woefully excited for the future.

I live there now. Well, technically outside the city but I work downtown so spend a lot of the week there. Grew up in the area too. I think “mellow and yet full of artistic energy” really fits it well.